Wednesday, May 19, 2010

If you weren’t one of the people driving past me as I walked to pick up Bob from pre-school last Friday, here’s what you missed: Me, an average-y looking woman in jeans, t-shirt, mom hair (pony-tail) and mom make-up (sunglasses) walking at a moderate pace, headed south. Suddenly, without warning, I ripped off my sunglasses, clutched my left eye in both hands, hopped up and down and loudly recited all of the colorful language that I know. I know a lot. I looked crazy and for a moment, I was.

There was something in my eye. Not a regular eyelash-dust-mote something but a burning-ember-branding-iron something. I jammed my finger into the corner of my eye trying to get my watering eye to water even more and release what I was sure was a smoldering Presto Log. It didn’t work.

By the time I made it to school, my eye was watering a little less but still throbbing. I kept my sunglasses on, grabbed Bob and made a quick exit. When we got back to the house, I poured a bottle of Visine into my left eye. Now my eye was throbbing, my nose was running and I could taste Visine in the back of my throat.

I held a wet washcloth over my eye as I WebMD’ed “sudden blindness“ and “eye disease symptoms.” My in-house physician, 4 year-old Dr. Bob, advised that I have a glass of water and a hug. I popped two Tylenols with the glass of water and the hugging. I then resorted to the action that has never revealed anything in the history of all things in my eye, I went into the bathroom, held up my eyelid and looked at my eye in the mirror. That’s when the screaming started.

There was a large, dead black fly in my eye. Not a little gnat, but a large housefly. After at one time experiencing an infant projectile vomiting directly into my mouth and reacting with laughter, I know that my gross-out threshold is extremely high. This meant nothing now. I was, to use a formal psychological term, freaking-the-hell-out.

Bob ran in to see what I was yelling about and when I explained through my whimpering that there was a fly in my eye, he advised that I let it loose in the yard because, “maybe the fly’s family was looking for him.” I clarified that there was a dead fly in my eye. Dead. Fly. In my eye. Because I killed it. With my eye.

Bob then suggested I calm down. He next suggested that I take the fly out of my eye. His idea seemed less invasive than my own idea, which involved removing my entire cootied out eyeball and socket. I followed Bob’s direction and after a few dozen tries, I was able to retrieve the fly corpse from my throbbing eye with a Q-tip.

I have now awarded my killer left eye the nickname, “The Exterminator.” Please call with any pest control needs. I’ll work on curbing the screams.

18 comments:

I can understand that in the heat of the moment both you and Bob forgot that the spider always goes after the fly. Followed by the bird, the cat, the dog, the goat, the cow, and if all else fails, the horse.

Wish you could have seen me with hand to my mouth and horrified look on my face as I read this. Like, that is just so crazy. I've never heard of such a thing happening. And that you carried that fly in your eye ALL THE WAY HOME. I will be telling this story to my family for sure over dinner tomorrow.

Thank god you had the mommy make up on b/c the look of horror and disbelief in Bob's face if he had looked at you and had seen the fly in your eye, well, it seizes my chest up to even imagine the horror.

This is the most horrifying thing I have heard in a long while. How exactly did you make this story funny? You're amazing. My retelling of it would have been like two sentences long and contained bad words. And I never write with bad words.